If Scotland Leaves, Will the Union Jack Still Wave?

The Union Jack combines the colors of the three patron saints of England, Scotland and Ireland.CreditTal Cohen/European Pressphoto Agency

LONDON — When Billy Bragg’s “Take Down the Union Jack” climbed up the charts in 2002, the year Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating 50 years on the throne, few would have thought that it could become a legitimate call.

But less than two months before Scotland holds a referendum on whether to become independent, Mr. Bragg’s lyrics sound a little less preposterous:

Britain isn’t cool, you know It’s really not that great It’s not a proper country It doesn’t even have a patron saint.

Certainly, if Scots vote to secede on Sept. 18, Great Britain will be less great and the United Kingdom no longer, well, united. So what might the kingdom-sans-Scotland be called? And could the Union Jack — a flag that combines the colors of the three patron saints of England, Scotland and Ireland — come down at last as demanded by Mr. Bragg, who is English but a staunch supporter of Scottish independence?

Anecdotally at least, there seems to be a desire for change: The Flag Institute, an educational group in Britain that offers guidance about flags and their usage, surveyed its members last November and found that nearly two in three respondents wanted a new flag if Scotland broke away. Nowhere does the issue resonate more than in Wales, which was annexed by England more than five centuries before the current flag was designed in 1801 and is the only nation not represented.

“If there is a yes vote, there are real questions about what happens to the state, which will then consist of England, Northern Ireland and Wales,” said Carwyn Jones, the Welsh first minister.

If Scotland comes out of the flag, he insisted, Wales will have to go in.

The Flag Institute has received many proposed redesigns for the Union Jack, with some suggesting that a red Welsh dragon be added. Welsh people think this is a great idea. But there are only three million of them; many of England’s 53 million people might object.

A more subtle approach would combine the black-and-yellow flag of the Welsh patron saint, St. David, with those of England’s St. George and Ireland’s St. Patrick. But if the white-on-blue saltire of Scotland’s St. Andrew is excluded, should the red-on-white saltire of St. Patrick remain nearly a century after Irish independence — particularly given the resentment it inspires among Ulster unionists?

The most straightforward idea, replacing the flag’s current blue background with a black one, has a catch, too: “That used to be a fascist flag in the U.K.,” said Graham Bartram, the Flag Institute’s chief vexillologist (vexillology is the study of flags). “It would be like all those sci-fi movies coming true. I can just see all the soldiers marching in their black uniforms saluting a black flag.”

Mr. Bartram, an adviser to the Flags and Heraldry Committee (yes, there is such a thing) in the British Parliament, said if Britain, or what would be left of it, proposed a redesign, it “would be opening a Pandora’s box.”

The only remotely comparable country that redesigned its flag in recent history is South Africa, “and that was after they had a political revolution,” he said.

Helpfully, the College of Arms, the official register for coats of arms, has said that the flag would not technically have to be changed if the queen remained the head of state of an independent Scotland.

If the flag is a contentious issue, so is the nomenclature of what the British government has awkwardly dubbed the “continuing U.K.” The Scottish government prefers to call it the “rest of the U.K.”

Whatever the official name — like the flag, most people bet that it will remain the same — there is a danger that in the world’s perception at least, Great Britain would become Little Britain.